Back from the dead

Two Fridays ago a young man came up to me and began talking in familiar way. He was shy, not as brazen as most, so I let him talk. He was also on the road with another young man who I felt I had seen before at the National Secretariat office in town. We chatted and he said I was beautiful. I half laughed and brushed it off. I said at his initial suggestion he could come and see me on the weekend. He didn’t. I forgot all about it so it didn’t matter. We were, all 3 of us, picked by a man in a van with lots of second hand books and a few young children. He dropped us in town.

Monday morning I was ‘ssss’d’ at and I turned to see the young man, Stevo. I teasingly scolded him for not coming. He said he was too shy to come. A cultural thing that I am quite glad of really. He came and waited for a taxi with me. Chatted, telling me he wanted to see me and I was beautiful and he told his father he was friends with a white lady and his father was happy. I lost interest at that point. He said he’d pop by. I wasn’t keen so decided to sincerely hope that he would become shy like he did over the weekend. I forgot all about it.

Tuesday morning I was picked up by the man in the van on my way to town. This time there were no books but the small children were present. His children on their way to school. He picked a young woman, a friend of the family on the way and they began chatting in Frafra about something. I knew it was serious because there were a lot of ‘oh, my goodnesses’ and ‘dear lords’. When she got out just before the police barrier at a small set of 2 shops the man turned to me and told me that this was were my friend had died last night. The one he’d taken with me to town on Friday. The son of the Regional Director of Coordinating councils. He was sorry to have spoiled my day. It was Steven. I was shocked.

I spent the day upset and grumpy not sure whether to cry because I really hadn’t been interested, understanding why he hadn’t called by, knowing it was his karma but at the same time feeling sorry for the unnecessary loss of a life. It was a motorbike accident. This road from my home to town has someone die at the most one a week, the least once a fortnight. At least it has since we’ve been here. It is a 24 hour competition between goats, guinea fowl, cows, pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, share taxis, private cars, trucks and potholes. I told a few people to get it off my chest and everyone agreed that it was such a tragic death. He was only 24.

Well, yesterday, Sunday, I was in my kitchen and my housemate came to say that there was a Steven at the door to see me. I looked at her blankly and said that it was not possible because he was dead. She said I should go and see for myself. My two other housemates stared at me in disbelief. Was it a ghost? It had been confirmed that it had been him in the accident. I was slightly overwhelmed. I went outside.

He was standing there with glassy eyes ready with tears. He looked emotionally torn. I told him I’d thought he was dead. He said it had been his brother, 35 with a girlfriend and no kids, the eldest son, his only brother. I invited him in for a chat thinking perhaps this second chance had something in it and the least I could do was talk to him at such a tragic time. So we chatted and then he got around to the topic of wanting me. No matter how I tried to explain it and how he tried to explain his ideas we both had to repeat ourselves three times because we wanted clarification or couldn’t understand what the other was expressing. I suggested we go for a walk because everyone was home and we had little privacy to discuss the idea of getting together.

He took my across the road to a dam surrounded by trees and covered by water lilies. It was peaceful and I had no idea such a lovely spot was so near my home. When you stray from the road you find what you thought was suburbia is actually still fairly rural. We talked and he reached and touched me occasionally. He talked about having sex with me and I gave no indicators as to whether it would or would not happen. I wanted to hear him talk and decide what sort of person he was. I explained about having to be on my guard because people approach white ladies all the time and most of them are not sincere. I didn’t believe he got it however I decided to accept his idea of coming over later that evening. He had a meeting with his father to discuss funeral arrangements for his brother and would come after. I envisaged watching a video and then talking and then maybe we would kiss, after that I would see how I felt.

So he came over with some plantain and an orange. He sat very tensely on the couch. I thought about the differences between his and my culture about handling emotions and how we express them. If he was Aussie I would sit next to him and reach out and touch his hand and see if he was okay. I did this. I felt slightly strange. I thought he would need some friendly support. He actually just wanted to have sex. He spent the next 20 minutes trying every possible way, walking in and out of my bedroom and the lounge room, sitting on me, sitting me on him. I spent the 20 minutes pushing him off, telling him to settle down and asking him to leave. The message did not get through. It seems his penis radar was far too strong. He is going through a rough time and wanted some comfort and he thought if he could just have a 5-minute fuck his world would not come crashing down and he could stand up and be a man.

I understood it was not anything about me that he wanted and so said I was going to the drinking spot where my friends were. It was the only way I could get him to leave, to leave the house myself. I got my keys, locked my room and we left the house. He kept trying to talk me round and apologise. I accepted the apology but made it clear that it did not mean that I would then turn around and let him have me. He thought it did. Katie, my Aussie housemate, walked past on her way to the house for something, and he tried to get her to talk to me about that he was sorry I was annoyed at him etc. She laughed, made a joke of it, went on her way. I was actually very calm. I turned to him and said I was going to the spot. That is it. I walked away and left him to whatever it was he was going to decide to do.

I won’t be seeing him again. If I see him around I shall ignore him. He goes to Tamale in a week and so I will not be really seeing him anyway. For that I am thankful.